Broomfield youth sentenced to 8 years probation for assault

Incident took place last year at Paul Derda rec center

By Jennifer Rios

Staff Writer

Posted:
09/20/2017 10:40:33 AM MDT

A Broomfield teenager accused of luring two 6-year-old girls into the bathroom of Paul Derda Recreation Center and sexually assaulting them was sentenced to eight years probation Friday and will have to register as a sex offender.

The incident was reported to police Nov. 5 when the suspect still was a juvenile.

The now-18-year-old also was ordered to only have supervised contact with his younger sister and will be required to complete a Sex Offender Management Board (SOMB) approved treatment program.

It will be up to a multidisciplinary team to determine if he must be supervised when interacting with other minors. Until that decision is made, he will be ordered to have no contact.

The teen was charged as a juvenile, but later pleaded guilty to an adult felony — attempted sexual assault on a child, a Class 5 felony.

"All I can really say ... I just wish I could take back those two minutes of everything I did," he said in court.

Public defender Alec Egizi pointed out that his client already has spent nearly 300 days in jail, including spending time in isolation because he didn't want to go into general population.

"He's lost an enormous amount of weight. He's down to 95 pounds," Egizi said. "When I interact, he is still polite and bright and enjoys the company. He reacts well when there are people there to interact with who he trusts."

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Attorney from both sides also discussed the teen's mental health issues, which they say went back to when he was a young child, and more recently have included depression and suicidal tendencies. That, and physical ailments, have held him back and made social interaction more difficult, Egizi said, including how small he is for his age.

There are significant drug and alcohol concerns, Egizi said, and the youth is surrounded by a loving family that has, and will continue, to support him.

His family wants their son to grow in terms of social interaction and allow him to prove he can lead a normal life, Egizi said, and improve his boundaries, which he will work on in therapy. He also pointed to what he said were low-level risk factors found in a presentence evaluation.

Egizi also wanted to make it clear how remorseful the teen was and that he "sometimes doesn't express himself as clearly as he feels, especially in writing."

Several of the teen's family was present, as well as the father of one the victims, at the sentencing hearing.

The father said during the hearing that he does have "compassion for the teen and his family," but that what happened to his daughter is "very disturbing."

"It's still very hard for me to move forward," he said, "and her mother as well."

He asked the judge that the punishment include stringentcontrol over the teen's actions, and that he receives the medical treatment he needs so that no other father or mother has to watch their daughter go through something similar.

"She is too young to fully understand what happened," he said, but he worries for her future when she realized how her body, and her innocence as a child, was violated.

A surveillance video from the rec center showed the teen walking toward the bathroom, pause and turn around to ensure the girls, who are holding hands, follow him.

A little more than two minutes later, the girls rush out scared, and run to one of their mothers. The teen is seen walking out shortly after.

An attorney with the district attorney's office also made note of a jail conversation the teen had with his mother who told him she "warned him" about how this type of inappropriate behavior would affect everybody. This leads the office to believe there might have been other situations, maybe statements or acts, that concerned his mother in the past.

Egizi described his client's actions as "impulsive, wrong and stupid," but Judge Mark Warner said in reality it was "shocking and heinous."

"In the courts view it sent ripples of fear through the community," Warner said. "Families go to the rec center because it's a safe place to go with their kids, and within a manner of minutes these young girls were victimized."

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